The greatest thing in the world

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THE GREATEST THING

IN

THE WORLD

BY

(ENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S.

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JAMES POTT & COMPANY, Publishers
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HIS address, delivered to a large body of Stu-
dents at Northfield, Mass., has found its way
into several foreign languages. It is now published
in English, corrected from the original stenogra-
pher's report, by request, and is the only Author-
ized Edition.

James Pott & Cgimpany.

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^P^HOUGH-I ^peak with the tongues of men
JS^3rn6r-oi a-ii^elsj and have not Love, I am

'/idv" .""become" as sounding brass, or a tinkling
'' ' I ' I ' cymbal. And though I have tliu gift of ^Sm
prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all
knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I
could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am
nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed
the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,
and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.

Voo M

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tove vaunteth not ilself, is not puffed U]
I Doth not behave itself unseemly,

Seeketh not hex own,
Is not easily provoked,
//■^ ' , Tiiinketh no evil ;

;.;il!, jiRejoicethnoJ^in iniquity, but rejoicetb in

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■V9''';'-\'^B4arfrth all things, believeth all things

■yyjJ^iiKk b1\, things, believeth
'r'':Hf';''lf|:;!Ji^lWpeth pU things.

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,. ,^,,, , / 1 I T OVK iK-vur faik'lli : lull v.'Ik'IIrt ilii'i-c bL- |>ro|.|ie-

V' ^"■'■'11/ ( -I—' cic-s, Uiuy sluill fail ; u IitIIrt lliere bu loiiLjues,

-;■';■;-■'?■' ('1 J ttasy sliall ct.'a>.o ; wlii'llirr ilifrr be knuwIcilLjc, it

/l/ shall vanish away, Vi,t wu kimw in purl, ami we

(.i'' pi-ophcs\' in ^tait. liui ali^n [ha! which In perfect

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is collie, then thai winch is iir pari shall he done
away. yVhen I v.as ■ c'l:ihl, 1 spak-as a child, [
Under^od as a child, 1 Jioaijh; - a 'hild ; bul when
wav ■■'\l"Ush. ihiiii.;-. Kit

;\ '< '^^jf.'Zl I/I b'Came a man, I put away ■■".rush, lliirn,;-. l-i

/' I '■■"''.>-\ 'Kiy!'' "iv<v we see througli a glass, d:.>i';ly : Tan 'Vii fat
■ •■■■■A /I Hi' !■ '" f^ce : now f know in part ; but tlnn slioll I kno

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iveji as also I am known- An<l lltw ab.dtth f "th,

i.'l' thope, Love, these three; but the greatest ■■ •the'se i-

;' Love. — I Cur. xiii.

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^^ iS^'> ^^J^ jjjyERYONE has asked himself the

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great question of antiquity as
\' '^'" -^ ' of the modern world; What is

the sumnniin boniun — the supreme good ? You have
life before you. Once only you can live it. What is
the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift \.o covet?
We have been accustomed to be told that the great-
est thing in the relicjious world is Faith. That great
word has been the key-note for centuries of the popu-

10 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

lar religion; and ^vc have easily learned to look
upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well,
we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may
miss the mark. I have taken you, in the chapter
which I have just read, to Christianity at its source ;
and there we have seen, " The greatest of these is
love." It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking
of faith just a moment before. He says, " If I have
all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have
not love, I am nothing." So far from forgetting he
deliberately contrasts them, " Now abideth Faith,
Hope, Love," and without a moment's hesitation the
decision falls, " The greatest of these is Love."

And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recom-
mend to others his own strong point. Love was not
Paul's strong point. The observing student can de-
tect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all
through his character as Paul gets old ; but the hand
that wrote, " The greatest of these is love," when we
meet it first, is stained with blood.

THE GREA TEST THING IN THE WORLD. I I

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in
singling out love as the sunimum bonum. ■ The mas-
terpieces of Christianity are agreed about it. Peter
says, " Above all things have fervent love among
yourselves." Above all things. And John goes far-
ther, " God is love." And you remember the pro-
found remark which Paul makes elsewhere, " Love is
the fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what
he meant by that ? In those days men were working
their passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten Com-
mandments, and the hundred and ten other command-
ments which they had manufactured out of them.
Christ said, I will show you a more simple way. If
you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten
things, without ever thinking about them. If you
love, you will unconsciously fulfil- the whole law.
And you can readily see for yourselves how that must
be so. Take any of the commandments. " Thou
shaft have no other gods before Me." If a man love
God, you will not require to tell him that. Love is the

12 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

fulfilling of that law. " Take not His name in vain."
Would he ever dream of taking His name in vain if He
loved Him ? " Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
holy." Would he not be too glad to have one day in
seven to dedicate more exclusively to the object of his
affection? Love would fulfil all these laws regarding
God. And so, if he loved Man, you would never think
of telling him to honour his father and mother. He
could not do anything else. It would be preposterous
to tell him not to kill. You could only insult him if
you suggested that he should not steal — how could he
steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to
beg him not to bear false witness against his neighbor.
If he loved him it would be the last thing he would
do. And you would never dream of urging him not to
covet what his neighbors had. He would rather they
possessed it than himself. In this way " Love is the
fulfilling of the law." It is the rule for fulfilling all
rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old
commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life.

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

13

Now Paul had learned that ; and in this noble
eulogy he has given us the most wonderful and orig-
inal account extant of the siimiiinvi bomiui. We may
divide it into three parts. In the beginning of the
short chapter, we have Love contrasted ; in the heart of
it, -^ve have Love analysed ; to^vards the end, we have
Love defended as the supreme gift.

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*"' ■ AUL begins by contrasting
Love with other things that
men in those days thought much
of. I shall not attempt to go over those things in
detail. Their inferiority is already obvious.

He contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble
gift it is, the power of playing upon the souls and ivills
of men, and rousing them to lofty purposes and holy
deeds. Paul says, " If I speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." And \ve all

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 15

know why. We have all felt the brazenness of words
without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable
unpersuasiveness of eloquence behind which lies no
Love.

He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with
mysteries. He contrasts it with faith. He contrasts
it with charity. Why is Love greater than faith .'' Be-
cause the end is greater than the means. And why is
it greater than charity? Because the whole is greater
than the part. Love is greater than faith, because the
end is greater than the means. What is the use of
having faith? It is to connect the soul with God.
And what is the object of connecting man with God ?
That he may become like God. But God is Love.
Hence Faith, the means, is in order to Love, the end.
Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It is
greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater
than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one
of the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may
even be, and there is, a great deal of charity without

l6 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

Love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a
beggar on the street ; it is generally an easier thing
than not to do it. Yet Love is just as often in the
withholding. We purchase relief from the sympathetic
feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at the cop-
per's cost. It is too cheap — too cheap for us, and
often too dear for the beggar. If we really loved him
we would either do more for him, or less.

Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyr-
dom. And I beg the little band of would-be mis-
sionaries — and I have the honour to call some of
you by this name for the first time — to remember
that though you give your bodies to be burned, and
have not Love, it profits nothing — nothing ! You
can take nothing greater to the heathen world than
the impress and reflection of the Love of God upon
your own character. That is the universal language.
It will take you years to speak in Chinese, or in
the dialects of India. From the day you land, that
language of Love, understood by all, will be pouring

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 1/

forth its unconscious eloquence. It is tlie man who
is the missionary, it is not his words. His charac-
ter is his message. In the heart of Africa, among
the great Lal<es, I have come across black men and
women who remembered tlie only white man they
ever saw before — David Livingstone ; and as you cross
his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces
light up as they speak of the kind Doctor who
passed there years ago. They could not understand
him ; but they felt the Love that beat in his heart.
Take into your new sphere of labour, where \'ou
also mean to lay down your life, that simple charm,
and your life work must succeed. You can take
nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It is
not worth while going if you take anything less.
You may take every accomplishment ; you may be
braced for every sacrifice ; but if you give your body
to be burned, and have not Love, it will profit you
and the cause of Christ nothing.

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?^ FTER contrasting Love with these
things, Paul, in three verses, very
short, gives us an amazing analy-
sis of what this supreme thing is.
I ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing,
he tells us. It is like light. As you have seen
a man of science take a beam of light and pass it
through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come
out on the other side of the prism broken up into
its component colors— red, and blue, and yellow, and
violet, aui! orange, and all the colors of the rain-

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 1 9

bow — SO Paul passes this thing, Love, through the
magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes
out on the other side broken up into its elements.
And in these few words we have what one might call
the Spectrum of Love, the analysis of Love. Will you
observe what its elements are? Will you notice that
they have common names ; that they are- virtues which
we hear about every day ; that they are things which
can be practised by every man in every place in life;
and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary
virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is
made up ?

The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients : —

Patience . . " Love suffereth long."

Kindness . . " And is kind."

Generosity . . " Love erivieth not." .

Humility ., . " Love vaunteth not , itself, is not

.puffed up."
Courtesy . . " Doth not behave itself unseemly."

20 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

Unselfishness . " Seeketh not her own."
Good Temper . " Is not easily provoked."
Guilelessness . " Thinketh no evil."
Sincerity . . " Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoic-
eth in the truth."

Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy;
unselfishness ; good temper ; guilelessness ; sincerity —
these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the per-
fect man. You will observe that all are in relation to
men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day
and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eter-
nity. We hear much of love to God ; Christ spoke
much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace
with heaven ; Christ made much of peace on earth.
Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the
inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an
eternal spirit through this temporal world. The su-
preme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the
giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words

. THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 21

and acts which make up the sum of every common
day.

There is no time to do more than make a passing
note upon each of these ingredients. Love is Patience.
This is the normal attitude of Love ; Love passive,
Love waiting to begin ; not in a hurry ; calm ; ready to
do its work when the summons comes, but meantime
wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.
Love suffers long ; beareth all things ; believeth all
things ; hopeth all things. For Love understands, and
therefore waits.

Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed
how much of Christ's life was spent in doing kind
things — in merely doing kind things ? Run over it
with that in view, and you will find that He spent a
great proportion of His time simply in making people
happy, in doing good turns to people. There is only
one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that
is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what God
has put in our power is the happiness of those about

32 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind
to them.

" The greatest thing," says some one, " a man can do
for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His
other children." I wonder why it is that we are not all
kinder than we are? How much the world needs it.
How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts.
How infallibly it is remembered. How superabun-
dantly it pays itself back — for there is no debtor in the
world so honourable, so superbly honourable as Love.
" Love never faileth." Love is success, Love is happi-
ness. Love is life. " Love, I say," with Browning, " is
energy of Life."

" For life, with all it yields of joy or woe
And hope and fear,

Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, —
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."

Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love
dwelleth in God. God is Love. Therefore love. With-

■ THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 2T,

out distinction, without calculation, without procrasti-
nation, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very
easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most;
most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult,
and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There
is a difference between trying to please and giving
pleasure. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving
pleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous
triumph of a truly loving spirit. " I shall pass through
this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I
can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human
being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neg-
lect it, for I shall not pass this way again."

Generosity. " Love envieth not." This is love in
competition with others. Whenever you attempt a
good work you will find other men doing the same
kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy
them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who
are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetous-
ness and detraction. How little Christian work even is

24 THE GREATEST THING IJV THE WORLD.

a protection against un-Christian feeling. That most
despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a
Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold
of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of
magnanimity. Only one thing truly need the Christian
envy, the large, rich, generous soul which " envieth
not."

And then, after having learned all that, you have to
learn this further thing. Humility — to put a seal upon
your lips and forget what you have done. After you
have been kind, after Love has stolen forth into the
world and done its beautiful work, go back into the
shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides
even from itself. Love waives even self-satisfaction.
" Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to
find in this summuni bonum : Courtesy. This is Love in
society. Love in relation to etiquette. " Love doth not
behave itself unseemly." Politeness has been defined
as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 25

things. And the one secret of politeness is to love.
Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can put the
most untutored persons into the highest society, and if
they have a reservoir of Love in their heart, they will
not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot
do it. Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no
truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet.
It was because he loved everything — the mouse, and
the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God
had made. So with this simple passport he could
mingle with any society, and enter courts and palaces
from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. You
know the meaning of the word " gentleman." It
means a gentle man — a man who does things gently
with love. And that is the whole art and mystery of
it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do
an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle
soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature cannot
do anything else. " Love doth not behave itself un-
seemly."

26 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

Unselfishness. "Love seeketh not her own." Ob-
serve: Seeketh not even that which is her own. In
Britain the Englishman is devoted, and rightly, to his
rights. But there come times when a man may exer-
cise even the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet
Paul does not summon us to give up our rights. Love
strikes much deeper. It would have us not seek them
at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal element alto-
gether from our calculations. It is not hard to give
up our rights. They are often external. The difficult
thing is to give up ourselves. The more difficult thing
still is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we
have sought them, bought them, won them, deserved
them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves
already. Little cross then perhaps to give them up.
But not to 3eek them, to look every man not on his
own things, but on the things of others — id opus est.
" Seekest thou great things for thyself ? " said the
prophet ; " seek them not." Why ? Because there is
no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 2/

only greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in
itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a great
purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is
more difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all,
than, having sought it, to give it up. I must take that
back. It is only true of a partly selfish heart. Noth-
ing is a hardship to Love, and nothing is hard. I
believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's " yoke "
is just His way of taking life. And I believe it is an
easier way than any other. I believe it is a happier
way than any other. The most obvious lesson in
Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in having
and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat,
there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in
giving. And half the world is on the wrong scent in
the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in
having and getting, and in being served by others. It
consists in giving, and in serving others. He that
would be great among you, said Christ, let him serve.
He that would be happy, let him remember that there

28 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

is but one way — it is more blessed, it is more happy, to
give than to receive.

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one : Good
Temper. " Love is not easily provoked." Nothing
could be more striking than to find this here. We are
inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless
weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nat-
ure, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not a
thing to take into very serious account in estimating a
man's character. And yet here, right in the heart of
this analysis of love, it finds a place ; and the Bible
again and again returns to condemn it as one of the
most destructive elements in human nature.

The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of
the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise
noble character. You know men who are all but per-
fect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for
an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or " touchy " disposi-
tion. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral
character is one of the strangest and saddest problems

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 29

of ethics. The truth is there are two great classes of
sins — sins of the Body, and sins of the Disposition.
The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first,
the Elder Brother of the second. Now society has no
doubt whatever as to which of these is the worse. Its
brand falls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal.
But are we right ? We have no balance to weigh one
another's sins, and coarser and finer are but human
words ; but faults in the higher nature may be less
venial than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him
who is Love, a sin against Love may seem a hundred
times more base. No form of vice, not worldliness,
not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more
to un-Christianise society than evil temper. For em-
bittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroy-
ing the most sacred relationships, for devastating
homes, for withering up men and women, for taking
the bloom off childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous
misery-producing power, this influence stands alone.
Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, pa-

30 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

tient, dutiful — let him get all credit for his virtues —
look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his own
father's door. " He was angry," we read, " and would
not go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon
the servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge
of the effect upon the Prodigal — and how many prodi-
gals are kept out of the Kingdom of God by the
unlovely character of those who profess to be inside ?
Analyse, as a study in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself
as it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is
it made of ? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty,
self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness
— these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless
soul. In varying proportions, also, these are the in-
gredients of all ill temper. Judge if such sins of the
disposition are not worse to live in, and for others to
live with, than sins of the body. Did Christ indeed
not answer the question Himself when He said, " I say
unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into
the Kingdom of Heaven before you." There is really

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 3 1

no place in Heaven for a disposition like this. A man
with such a mood could only make Heaven miserable
for all the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man
be born again, he cannot, he simply cannot, enter the
Kingdom of Heaven. For it is perfectly certain — and
you will not misunderstand me — that to enter Heaven
a man must take it with him.

You will see then why Temper is significant. It is
not in what it is alone, but in what it reveals. This is
why I take the liberty now of speaking of it with such
unusual plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a
revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the
intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent dis-
ease within ; the occasional bubble escaping to the sur-
face which betrays some rottenness underneath ; a sam-
ple of the most hidden products of the soul dropped
involuntarily when off one's guard ; in a word, the
lightning form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian
sins. For a want of patience, a want of kindness, a
want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want of unself-

32 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

ishness, are all instantaneously symbolised in one flash
of Temper.

Hence it is not enough to deal with the Temper.
We must go to the source and change the inmost nat-
ure, and the angry humours will die away of them-
selves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid
fluids out, but by putting something in — a great Love,
a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of
Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, trans-
forms all. This only can eradicate what is wrong,
work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and
rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not
change men. Time does not change men. Christ
does. Therefore " Let that mind be in you which was
also in Christ Jesus." Some of us have not much
time to lose. Remember, once more, that this is a
matter of life or death. I cannot help speaking ur-
gently, for myself, for yourselves. " Whoso shall offend
one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were
better for him that a millstone were hanged about his

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 33

neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the

sea." That is to say, it is the deliberate verdict of the

Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to love.

It is better not to live than not to love.

Guilelessness and Sincerity may be dismissed almost

with a word. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious

people. And the possession of it is the great secret of

personal influence. You will find, if you think for a

moment, that the people who influence you are people

who believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion

men shrivel up ; but in that atmosphere they expand,

and find encouragement and educative fellowship. It

is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard,

uncharitable world there should still be left a few rare

souls who think no evil. This is the great unworldli-

ness. Love " thinketh no evil," imputes no motive,

sees the bright side, puts the best construction on

every action. What a delightful state of mind to live

in ! What a stimulus and benediction even to meet

with it for a day ! To be trusted is to be saved. And
3

34 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon
see that success is in proportion to their belief of our
belief in them. For the respect of another is the first
restoration of the self-respect a man has lost ; our ideal
of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of
what he may become.

" Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the
truth." I have called this Sincerity from the words
rendered in the Authorised Version by " rejoiceth in
the truth." And, certainly, were this the real transla-
tion, nothing could be more just. For he who loves
will love Truth not less than men. He will rejoice in
the Truth — rejoice not in what he has been taught to
believe ; not in this Church's doctrine or in that ; not
in this ism or in that ism ; but " in tkc Truth." He
will accept only what is real ; he will strive to get at
facts ; he will search for Triith with a humble and
unbiassed mind, and cherish whatever he finds at any
sacrifice. But the more literal translation of the
Revised Version calls for just such a sacrifice for

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 35

truth's sake here. For what Paul really meant is, as
we there read, " Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but
rejoiceth with the truth," a quality which probably
no one English word — and certainly not Sincerity — ad-
equately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly,
the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of
others' faults ; the charity which delights not in expos-
ing the weakness of others, but " covereth all things ; "
the sincerity of purpose which endeavours to see things
as they are, and rejoices to find them better than sus-
picion feared or calumny denounced.

So much for the analysis of Love. Now the busi-
ness of our lives is to have these things fitted into our
characters. That is the supreme work to which we
need to address ourselves in this world, to learn Love.
Is life not full of opportunities for learning Love?
Every man and woman every day has a thousand of
them. The world is not a playground ; it is a school-
room. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And
the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we ca'i

36 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

love. What makes a man a good cricketer ? Practice.
What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a
good musician ? Practice. What makes a man a good
linguist, a good stenographer ? Practice. What makes
a man a good man ? Practice. Nothing else. There
is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the
soul in different ways, under different laws, from those
in which we get the body and the mind. If a man does
not exercise his arm he develops no biceps muscle ;
and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no
muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigour
of moral fibre, nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love
is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich,
strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round
Christian character — the Christlike nature in its fullest
development. And the constituents of this great char-
acter are only to be built up by ceaseless practice.

What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop ?
Practising. Though perfect, we read that he learned
obedience, and grew in wisdom and in favour with God.

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. i7

Do not quarrel therefore with your lot in life. Do not
complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environ-
ment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and
sordid souls you have to live and work with. AbovQ
all, do not resent temptation ; do not be perplexed
because it seems to thicken round you more and more,'
and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer.
That is your practice. That is the practice which God
appoints you ; and it is having its work in making you
patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and
kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is
moulding the still too shapeless image within you. It
is growing more beautiful, though you see it not, and
every touch of temptation may add to its perfection.
Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate
yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among
troubles, and dif^culties, and obstacles. You remem-
ber Goethe's words : Es bildet ein Talent sick in der
Stille, Dock ein Character in dem Strom der Welt.
" Talent develops itself in solitude ; character in the

38 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

stream of life." Talent develops itself in solitude — the
talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation, of seeing the
unseen ; Character grows in the stream of the world's
life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love.

How ? Now, how ? To make it easier, I have
named a few of the elements of love. But these are
only elements. Love itself can never be defined.
Light is a something more than the sum of its ingre-
dients — a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love
is something more than all its elements — -a. palpitating,
quivering, sensitive, living thing. By synthesis of all
the colours, men can make whiteness, they cannot
make light. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can
make virtue, they cannot make love. How then are
we to have this transcendent living whole conveyed
into our souls ? We brace our wills to secure it. We
try to copy those who have it. We lay down rules
about it. We watch. We pray. But these things
alone will not bring Love into our nature. Love is
an effect. And only as we fulfil the right condition

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 39

can we have the effect produced. Shall I tell you what
the cause is ?

If you turn to the Revised Version of the First
Epistle of John you will find these words : " We love
'because He first loved us." "We love," not "We love
Him." That is the way the old version has it, and it
is quite wrong. We love — because He first loved us."
Look at that word " because." It is the cause oi which
I have spoken. " Because He first loved us," the effect
follows that we love, we love Him, we love all men.
We cannot help it. Because He loved us, we love, we
love everybody. Our heart is slowly changed. Con-
template the love of Christ, and you will love. Stand
before that mirror, reflect Christ's character, and you
will be changed into the same image from tenderness
to tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot
love to order. You can only look at the lovely object,
and fall in love with it, and grow into likeness to it.
And so look at this Perfect Character, this Perfect Life.
Look at the great Sacrifice as He laid down Himself,

40 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

all through life, and upon the Cross of Calvary ; and
you must love Him. And loving Him, you must be-
come like Him. Love begets love. It is a process of
• induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence of an
'electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time be-
, comes electrified. It is changed into a temporary mag-
net in the mere presence of a permanent magnet, and
as long as you leave the two side by side, they are both
magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him who loved
us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will become
a permanent magnet, a permanently attractive force ;
and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like Him
you will be drawn unto all men. That is the inevitable
effect of Love. Any man who fulfils that cause must
"have that effect produced in him. Try to give up the
idea that religion comes to us by chance, or by mys-
tery, or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law, or
by supernatural law, for all law is Divine. Edward
Irving went to see a dying boy once, and when he
entered the room Tie just put his hand on the sufferer's

THE GREA7EST THING IN THE WORLD.

41

head, and said, " My boy, God loves you," and went
away. And the boy started from his bed, and called
out to the people in the house, " God loves me ! God
loves me ! " It changed that boy. The sense that
God loved him overpowered him, melted him down,
and began the creating of a new heart in him. And
that is how the love of God melts down the unlovely
heart in man, and begets in him the new creature, who
is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish. And
there is no other way to get it. There is no mystery
about it. We love others, we love everybody, we love
our enemies, because He first loved us.

tence or two to add
about Paul's reason for
&-. '^^ singling out love as

the supreme posses-
sion. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single
word it is this : it lasts. " Love," urges Paul, " never
faileth." Then he begins again one of his marvellous
lists of the great things of the day, and exposes them
one b}' one. He runs over the things that men
thought were going to last, and shows that they are
all fleeting, temporary, passing away.

" Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." It

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 43

was the mother's ambition for her boy in those days
that he should become a prophet. For hundreds of
years God had never spoken by means of any prophet,
and at that time the prophet was greater than the king.
Men waited wistfully for another messenger to come,
and hung upon his lips when he appeared as upon
the very voice of God. Paul says, " Whether there
be prophecies, they shall fail." This Book is full of
prophecies. One by one they have " failed " ; that is,
having been fulfilled their work is finished ; they have
nothing more to do now in the world except to feed a
devout man's faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another
thing that was greatly coveted. " Whether there be
tongues, they shall cease." As we all know, many,
many centuries have passed since tongues have been
known in this world. They have ceased. Take it in
any sense you like. Take it, for illustration merely,
as languages in general — a sense which was not in
Paul's mind at all, and which though it cannot give

44 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

US the specific lesson will point the general truth.
Consider the words in which these chapters were
written — Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin — the
other great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago.
Look at the Indian language. It is ceasing. The lan-
guage of Wales, of Ireland, of the .Scottish Highlands
is dying before our eyes. The most popular book in
the English tongue at the present time, except the
Bible, is one of Dickens's works, his Pickwick Papers.
It is largely written in the language of London street-
life ; and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be
unintelligible to the average English reader.

Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater bold-
ness adds, " Whether there be knowledge, it shall
vanish away." The wisdom of the ancients, where is
it ? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy to-day knows
more than Sir Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge
has vanished away. You put yesterday's newspaper in
the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away. You buy
the old editions of the great encyclopaedias for a few

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 45

pence. Their knowledge has vanished away. Look
how the coach has been superseded by the use of
steam. Look how electricity has superseded that, and
swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion.
One of the greatest living authorities, Sir William
Thompson, said the other day, " The steam-engine is
passing away." " Whether there be knowledge, it shall
vanish away." At every workshop you will see, in the
back yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few
levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust.
Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city. Men
flocked in from the country to see the great invention ;
now it is superseded, its day is done. And all the
boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon
be old. But yesterday, in the University of Edin-
burgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir James
Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day
his successor and nephew. Professor Simpson, was
asked by the librarian of the University to go to the
library and pick out the books on his subject that were

,46 THE qREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian was
this : " Take every text-book that is more than ten
years old, and put it down in the cellar." Sir James
Simpson was a great authority only a few years ago :
men came from all parts of the earth to consult him ;
and almost the whole teaching of that time is con-
signed by the science of to-day to oblivion. And in
every branch of science it is the same. " Now we
know in part. We see through a glass darkly."

Can you tell me anything that is going to last?
Many things Paul did not condescend to name. He
did not mention money, fortune, fame ; but he picked
out the great things of his time, the things the best
men thought had something in them, and brushed
them peremptorily aside. Paul had no charge against
these things in themselves. All he said about them
was that they would not last. They were great things,
but not supreme things. There were things beyond
them. What we are stretches past what we do, beyond
what we possess. Many things that men denounce as

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 47

sins are not sins ; but they are temporary. And that
is a favourite argument of the New Testament. John
says of the world, not that it is wrong, but simply that
it " passeth away." There is a great deal in the world
that is delightful and beautiful; there is a great deal in
it that is great and engrossing ; but it will not last. All
that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the
flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a little while.
Love not the world therefore. Nothing that it- con-
tains is worth the life and consecration of an immortal
soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something
that is immortal. And the only immortal things are
these : " Now abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest
of these is love."

Some think the time may corne when two of these
three things will also pass away — faith into sight, hope
into fruition. Paul does not say so. We know but
little now about the conditions of the life that is to
come. But what is certain is that Love must last.
God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet therefore that

48 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is
going to stand, that one coinage which will be current
in the Universe when all the other coinages of all the
nations of the world shall be useless and unhonoured.
You will give yourselves to many things, give your-
selves first to Love. Hold things in their proportion.
Hold things in their proportion. Let at least the first
great object of our lives be to achieve the char-
acter defended in these words, the character- — and
it is the character of Christ — which is built round
Love.

I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever
notice how continually John associates love and faith
with eternal life? I was not told when I was a boy
that " God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should
have everlasting life." What I was told, I remember,
was, that God so loved the World that, if I trusted in
Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I was to
have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have

THE GREATEST THING IN IHE WORLD. 49

safety. But I had to find out ior myself that whoso-
ever trusteth in Him — that is, whosoever loveth Him,
for trust is only the avenue to Love — hath everlasting
life. The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer men
a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely
joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or merely safety ;
tell them how Christ came to give men a more abun-
dant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and
therefore abundant in salvation for themselves, and
large in enterprise for the alleviation and redemption of
the world. Then only can the Gospel take hold of the
whole of a man, body, soul, and spirit, and give to each
part of his nature its exercise and reward. Many of
the current Gospels are addressed only to a part of
man's nature. They offer peace, not life ; faith, not
Love; justification, not regeneration. And men slip
back again from such religion because it has never
really held them. Their nature vi^as not all in it. It
offered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life
that was lived before. Surely it stands to reason that

50 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

only a fuller love can compete with the love of the
world.

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love
for ever is to live for ever. Hence, eternal life is inex-
tricably bound up with love. We want to live for
ever for the same reason that we want to live to-
morrow. Why do you want to live to-morrow ? It
is because there is some one who loves you, and whom
you want to see to-morrow, and be with, and love back.
There is no other reason why we should live oh than
that we love and are beloved. It is when a man has no
one to love him that he commits suicide. So long as he
has friends, those who love him arid whom he loves, he
will live - because to live is to love. Be it but the love
of a dog, it will keep him in life ; but let that go and he
has no contact with life, no reason to live. He dies by
his own hand. Eternal life also is to know God, and
God is love. This is Christ's own definition. Ponder it.
" This is life eternal, that they rhight know Thee the
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 51

Love mustbe eternal. It is what God is. On the last
analysis, then, love is life. Love never faileth, and life
never faileth, so long as there is love. That is the phi-
losophy of what Paul is showing us ; the reason why in
the nature of things Love should be the supreme thing
— because it is going to last ; because in the nature of
things it is an Eternal Life. It is a thing that we are
living now, not that we get when we die ; that we shall
have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we
are living now. No worse fate can befall a man in this
world than to live and grow old alone, unloving, and
unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate con-
dition, loveless and unloved ; and to be saved is to love ;
and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God.
For God is love.

Now I have all but finished. How many of you will
join me in reading this chapter once a week for the next
three months? A nian did that once and it changed
his whole life. Will you do it ? It is for the greatest
thing in the world. You might begin by reading it

52 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

every day, especially the verses which describe the per-
fect character. " Love suffereth long, and is kind ; love
envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself." Get these in-
gredients into your life. Then everything that you do
is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time
to. No man can become a saint in his sleep ; and to
fulfil the condition required demands a certain amount
of prayer and meditation and time, just as improvement
in any direction, bodily or mental, requires preparation
and care. Address yourselves to that one thing ; at any
cost have this transcendent character exchanged for
yours. You will find as you look back upon your life
that the moments that stand out, the moments when
you have really lived, are the moments when you have
done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the
past, above and beyond all the transitory pleasures of
life, there leap forward those supreme hours when you
have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those
round about you, things too trifling to speak about, but
which you feel have entered into your eternal life. I

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 53

have seen almost all the beautiful things God has
made ; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that He
has planned for man ; and yet as I look back I see
standing out above all the life that has gone four or
five short experiences when the love of God reflected
itself in some poor imitation, some small act of love
of mine, and these seem to be the things which alone
of all one's life abide. Everything else in all our
lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary.
But the acts of love which no man knows about, or
can ever know about — they never fail.

In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day
is depicted for us in the imagery of One seated upon a
throne and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test
of a man then is not, " How have I believed ? " but
" How have I loved?" The test of religion, the final
test of religion, is not religiousness, but Love. I say
the final test of religion at that great Day is not relig-
iousness, but Love ; not what I have done, not what
I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I

54 THE GREATEST TH/ArG IN THE WORLD.

have discharged the common charities of life. Sins, of
•commission inthat awfuL indictment are not even re-
fei'red to. By what we Jiave not done, by sins of omis-
sion., -we -SLve judged. It could not be otherwise.". For
the withholding of love is the negation, of the spirit of
Christ, the- proof that we never kfiew Him, that;for us
He lived in vain. It means that H.e:^suggested nothing
in all Our' thoughts,' that He inspired aothing in all our
•lives, that we were not once neaf enough to Him' to be
seized with the spell of His .compassion for the world.
It means that^-' . . -■..../ ...

" I lived for myself, I thought for myself.
For myself, arid none beside
Just as if Jesus had never lived.
As if He had never died."

It is the Son of the Man before whom the nations of
the world shall be gathered. It is in the presence of
Hiifiidnity that we shall be charged. And the spectacle
itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge each one.

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 55

Those will be there whom we have met and helped ;
or there, the unpitied multitude whom we neglected or
despised. No other Witness need be summoned. No
other charge than lovelessness shall be preferred. Be
not deceived. The words which all of us shall one Day
hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches
and saints but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds
and doctrines but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles
and prayer-books but of cups of cold water in the name
of Christ. Thank God the Christianity of to-day is com-
ing nearer the world's need. Live to help that on.
Thank God men know better, by a hairsbreadth, what
religion is, what God is, who Christ is, where Christ is.
Who is Christ? He who fed the hungry, clothed the
naked, visited the sick. And where is Christ ? Where ?
— whoso shall receive a little child in My name re-
ceiveth Me. And who are Christ's? Every one that
loveth is born of God.